Currently, many contracts for maintenance of printers/copiers are dependent upon an accurate measurement of the use of the respective printer/copier covered by the contract. Further, equipment leases for printer/copiers often base their charges upon quantities of media that are output. To meter such usage and output, printers/copiers are provided with counters which generally count only media sheet picks from an input media bin. Such a count neither considers nor corrects the count value in the event of a paper jam or other malfunction which prevents a picked sheet from reaching an output bin.
Many printers/copiers have an ability to accommodate multiple sizes of media sheets, e.g., 8 1/2.times.11, A-4, 8 1/2.times.14, etc. Each such media sheet size can accommodate either more or less printing, depending upon relative sheet size. Unless the size of the media sheet is taken into account in a measurement of printer/copier usage, an accurate usage measure is difficult, if not impossible, to acquire.
Multi-functional printers are provided with a scanner which enables a document to be scanned into memory and for one or more copies to be made from the data derived from such scan action. Since the scanner is an expensive portion of the printer/copier, it is important to have a measure of its usage. A mere count of output pages produced by the printer/copier will not provide such a measure due to the fact that once a document is scanned, multiple copies can be made, simply by accessing the document data maintained in memory. Further, some copiers may be heavily utilized for single copy actions thereby exhibiting an almost one-for-one scan action per output sheet, while others may be heavily utilized for making multiple copies wherein the number of scans are much fewer than the number of output sheets.
Accordingly, there is a need to accurately measure the number of media sheets output from a printer/copier; to measure the number of operations of a document scanner included in the printer/copier; to measure the amount of toner used; and to provide a facility to enable the manufacturer or lessor to adjust a usage metering value in a manner which accurately measures printer/copier usage and, in addition, takes into account the aforesaid measurements.
There is a further need to assure that a level of security is maintained so that the usage count and/or metering action cannot be readily altered or sabotaged by a user. Further, if such alteration is attempted, a facility for correcting the alteration, while allowing continued machine usage is preferred.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for metering usage of a printer/copier.
It is another object of this invention to provide a metering method which enables accurate analysis of toner usage to be obtained.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a method for metering printer/copier usage which provides an accurate output count of media sheets fed to an output bin, rather than media sheets picked from an input bin.
It is yet a further object of this invention to provide an improved metering facility for a printer/copier which measures scanner usage.
It is still a further object of this invention to provide a method for securing usage metering data in such a manner as to counteract attempted tampering.